Shop Shield – Free Identity Protection

How is Shop Shield Different? Shop Shield® uses an unique replacement technique, which masks your true identity with anonymous data that is useless to thieves and can’t be traced to you. It’s the only product that protects ALL of your data, including your name, billing address, email address, passwords, phone number, credit cards, debit cards, and bank accounts. Most importantly, Shop Shield works almost everywhere major credit cards are accepted – so you can shop or pay bills securely at almost any web site.

Convenient to Use. They supply you with a Firefox Plugin (they call it a Firefox Companion), so it integrates right into the browser.

• Firefox Plugin
• IE Addon (Coming Soon)
• Shop Shield Website

No cost to you. There is no reason not to use this service. Even after the 60 day FREE trial expires, you can still use it to make Secure Online Payments for free. If you like the service and or want some additional features, they have other plans which may better suit your needs.

• The Free Plan – make anonymous purchases and pay bills using your checking account. Secure Site Registration is included with every transaction.
• The Free Plus Plan adds pay-as-you-go access to Shop Shield’s premium services, including the use of your credit and debit cards, as well as Secure Site Registration at non-transactional sites.
• The Unlimited Plan provides full access to all of Shop Shield’s features – including unlimited Shop Shield transactions using any major credit or debit card and your checking account.

So far, we’ve talked about how Shop Shield is the only Secure Payment Agent that safeguards all of the data exchanged when you shop or pay bills online. It protects everything – your identity, billing address and login information, as well as your account numbers and even your email address. But how does it really work?

Things to keep in mind:

• This service is FREE when you pay with a checking account.
• Secure Site Registration is included with every transaction.
• Shop Shield® is Guaranteed 100% Secure!

How Does it keep me Secure? Shopshield generates 2 tokens on your computer from a combination of different things during signup and made your desktop the authorized PC. This is the Phishcops system from Sestus Data. It is a true multi-factor system with encrypted identification, and multiple internal token traction and tracking.

This guarantees only a member using their authorized device can access their account. Even if a hacker stole your tokens, they would not work on another system because part of this token is your IP trace. Using it on a different PC with a different IP address throws up a red flag and you are either at an unauthorized device. If you are a hacker that thought stealing their tokens were enough, you are wrong.

I had the pleasure of exchanging messages with Bill Niedermeyer, CTO of Kemesa. He was kind enough to supply me with further technical information about their facilities and model of operation worked. He said:

“The security goes much deeper then this. As our facilities are SAS70 audited and exceed PCI compliance. It is a completely compartmentalized and function specific environment with passive and active monitoring systems to make sure all traffic is valid. The Sensitive Personal Information that we do have in the system is immediately encrypted when we receive it, and then fragmented to multiple databases on multiple servers. If someone got ahold of a backup tape, there is nothing there for them to get. Even if they had all the backup tapes, they still would have nothing without the defragmenting and unencrypting facility. And, that is only used when the person is authorized to access their own account. Only Fraud investigations of a member’s account, is visible to, Fraud personal at Kemesa Central Operations Services.”

It is really nice to know how this company is taking care of its customers. This shows me that Bill and the technical support group at Kemesa really understands their target audience and the important of building trust within the marketplace.

Installing and Using ShopShield. Now that we have discussed Who and What Shop Shield is, lets put it to the test.

Installing the plugin for Firefox is painless. I simply had to tell Firefox to allow the plugin to install after which it had to restart the Firefox browser which is typical for any plugin install.

Once Firefox restarts, you’ll notice the Shop Shield icon sits right on the main icon menu, next to the Home and Stop button on the browser interface.

Next, it loaded the Shop Shield registration web page, where I entered the typical Name, Phone number, Username. They also ask you to setup two security questions which are used to verify you if you call them for technical assistance. Do not confuse these with password retrieval questions as they are not the same. The security questions do a good job at avoiding asking questions that could potentially exposure personal information.

Clicking submit on the registration form then directs you to a page where you need to bookmark it. This ‘unique’ page helps you out of security authentication problems if one should occur and helps identity that this is the sole computer that was used to install ShopShield. What this does is prevent hackers from gaining access to your ShopShield account by generating a security token.

Using it to check out. I used Kohls.com as my test store to see just exactly how Shop Shield will work. Sure enough, when I went to check out, I clicked on the Shield in the browser navigation bar, and logged in. Kohls is one of the websites that the Shop Shield Auto-fill supports. It allowed me to click the ‘Auto Fill’ button which filled in all the appropriate fields with the anonymous information.

Potential to cause problems. One thing Shop Shield warns you about is the ‘Same Shipping Address’ check box. You cannot click this box or it will cause delays in your shipping and may cost you extra to have your package rerouted to your actual address.

Potential weak spot. This brings up another point about Shop Shield… If you have to use your real Shipping address, which includes your actual information, it still leaves a weak spot where a hacker could collect enough pieces to compromise your identity. Usually, this will not be the case though, because if there was a breech, they will not be looking at the shipping information, they will be looking for credit card information, which is what Shop Shield protects against.

GUI Glitch Issues. One down fall of Shop Shield was the amount of time it took to actually get it set up and working, and even then, there will graphical issues with the Firefox interface (I tested it on two different computers) and even reinstalled the plug-in just to make sure it wasn’t a glitch on my own behalf.

Remember that its in Beta. I kept in mind during my testing that it is in Beta and definitely still serves a great purpose. Your credit card information is protected when you shop with Shop Shield. Where it falls short can easily be fixed with future improvements and updates. The amount of effort needed to get it setup coupled with the glitches with the user interface really prevented me from enjoying what I think will be a great tool in the future.

All I can say is to give it a try and to keep it in mind it the future. It’s free, its guaranteed so you have nothing to lose by using it. Enjoy! Try Shop Shield Now

Eric Wiegand

Founder
Focus: Web design, General Tech
Credentials: Network Analyst IV
B.S. from University of Pittsburgh